Educational Psychology

PSY3025
Session Two
Theories of Development
(Ch.1, 2 & 3)
Dr. YB Chung
 The Structure and
Personnel of the Guidance
Service in HK Sec. Schools
Guidance Ed.
teachers Psychologist Social
Principal Workers
Guidance
Master SEN
Vice Coordinator
Principal
Guidance
Committee Students

Career
All (class) Discipline
A sample only Guidance
teachers Master
Master
2
Development?
Adulthood
Adolescence
Late Adulthood
Childhood

Infancy

www.psychologistworld.com

Is an old man (70 or above) still developing?

Development: The changes that occur in people as they
age, from conception until death.
(Ciccarelli & White, 2015, p.342)
The sources of changes
Nature vs Nurture
•Nature (genes / heredity)
• Influence of inherited characteristics on personality, physical growth,
intellectual growth, and social skills, etc.; behavioural genetics is
relatively new field that attempts to identify genetic basis of
behaviour.
•Nurture (environment)
• Influence of the environment on development, including parenting
styles, socioeconomic status, physical surroundings, etc. that does
not come from within the person.

“All that people are and all that people become is the
product of an interaction between nature and nurture.”
(Ciccarelli & White, 2015, p.342-343)
If you are rich, which kind
of schools will you choose
for your child?
A. Local Aided Schools
B. Local DS Schools
C. International Schools
Aspects of Development
• Physical and Motor development
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtnhsOAG7vI

• Cognitive development
• Piaget
• Vygotsky
• Psychosocial development
• Erickson
• Moral development
• Kohlberg

Ecological Theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1994)

Grade Skipping?

If you find your child is talented in Maths, will you request the
school to allow him to skip grades?
Jean Piaget (1896 –
1980)

• Swiss biologist and psychologist

• The first scholar to develop methods for
studying the ways children see and
understand the world
• Research are based on observations of his
own children and others
• Controversial but significant
Piaget’s Theory
•Views of development
•Cognitive processes
•Stage Theory
Views of development
• Mental concepts are formed through
experiences with objects and events
• Interaction between maturation and
environment.
• Children think differently from adults,
both quantitatively and qualitatively
• Children of different cognitive maturity
levels react to the same experience very
differently
• Development precedes learning
Views of development
•Constructivism
•Development depends on how the
child interacts with environment
•Learning means acting on it
•Learners actively construct knowledge
by continuously assimilating and
accommodating new information
•Learning is student-centered, children
are active learners
Why are they not active?
Cognitive processes
• Scheme / Schema: Mental framework to
organize experiences
• Adaptation
The two processes:
• Assimilation (New schemes are formed):
Children first try to understand new things in
terms of schemas they already possess
• Accommodation (Old schemas are changed):
Children alter or adjust old schemas to fit new
information and experiences
Cognitive processes
• Equilibration
• Disequilibrium: occurs if existing schemas
cannot assimilate new experiences
• Equilibrium: occurs when existing schemas are
modified to accommodate new experiences
(Striving for balance)
=> You find that what you expect to happen
actually does happen
Examples of Schema
• Babies are born with the sucking reflex and they
interact with external world with this reflex
• They put everything they can get hold into their
months and suck
• Through suck, they learn…..
 Adaptation
(Adjustment)
• People inherit the tendency to look for ways to adapt
more satisfactorily to their environment
• Assimilation: to understand a new thing by fitting it into
what we already know, e.g. identifying animals
• Accommodation: to change existing schemas to respond
to a new situation
• Both processes are required sometimes, e.g. sucking
through a straw
• When people encounter something that is too
unfamiliar, they may ignore/ filter it (neither assimilation
nor accommodation), e.g. language difficulties

(Woolfolk, 1995)
Assimilation (example)
• Primary students form the schema that you
can just add “ed” to any verb to make past
tense
• They add “ed” to the verb whenever they
need to put a past tense --- assimilate the
schema to different sentences (but no
accommodation yet)
The process of
Equilibration
• The act of searching for a balance
• Actual changes in thinking take place through
this process
• Unsuccessful attempts to balance may lead
to disequilibrium (out-of-balance)
 Schema: A mother points to a picture of
an apple and tells her child, “that’s an
apple.”

Assimilation: The child might see an

orange and say “apple” because both
objects are round.

Accommodation: When corrected, the

child might alter the schema for apple to
include “round” and “red.”
(Ciccarelli & White, 2015)
Organization
• Combining, arranging, recombining, rearranging
• Schemes / Schemas (psychological structures –
building blocks of thinking)
• e.g. sucking-through-a-straw scheme, recognizing-a-
rose scheme, drinking scheme, categorizing-plants
scheme….. (from simple to sophisticated)
• From separation to coordination (e.g. looking at an
object and grasp the object)
• Higher-level structure (looking at, reaching for, and
grasping the object)
(Woolfolk, 1995)
Cycle of Adaptation and
Equilibration
The process to explain how Lily learns a cow.

“A new experience is first

assimilated into an existing
scheme. If it does not fit
properly, cognitive
disequilibrium results.
Accommodation
(adjusting) the scheme
brings the child to
cognitive equilibrium, until
a new assimilation
challenges the scheme
again”.
(Cook & Cook, 2005, p.5-8)
Exercise
Please use the concepts of Piaget’s theory
to explain the below case:

1. A child knows his mother owns a red car. He then

identifies every red car as “Mommy’s car”.
2. But one day he sees a red convertible sports car
driven by his uncle, and his old way of classifying cars
does not work. He begins to call only his mother’s red
car “Mommy’s car” and the others he calls “red cars.”
Fire Hydrant
What are they?
 Stage Theory (Feldman, 2007)
Cognitive stage Age range Major characteristics
Development of object permanence
Sensorimotor 0–2 (idea that people/objects exist even
when they can’t be seen); development
of motor skills; little or no capacity for
symbolic representation
Development of language and symbolic
Preoperational 2–7 thinking, egocentric thinking
Development of conservation (idea that
Concrete 7 – 12 quantity is unrelated to physical
operational appearance); mastery of concept of
reversibility / transformation
Development of logical and abstract
Formal 12 and thinking
operational above
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhcgYgx7aAA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxo8zkgd07E
Sensorimotor Stage
(Birth to Age 2)
• Coordination of sensory and motor abilities
e.g. the grasping and sucking reflexes
• Reflexes: automatic responses to stimuli
• Intentional trial-and-error efforts
• Respond only to what they see and hear, not what they
remember or imagine
• Lack “Object permanence”: Out of sight, out of mind

Object permanence: object still exists even when it is out of sight.

Developing “Object
Permanence”

• Objects continue to exist even when he

cannot see or sense them.
• Infants lack the concept of Object
Permanence during the early months of life.
• An infant does not know that a hidden object
still exists.
• However, he starts to form mental images.
Preoperational Stage
(Ages 2 - 7)
• Development of symbols (language) as a
means to explore the world
• Egocentric: cannot see the world from others’
point of view
• The child (girl) knows that she has a brother, but
doesn’t understand that his brother has a sister
• A child tells her mom over the phone
• Child: “I hurt here”, pointing to her knee
• Mom: “Where?”
• Child: “Here! I told you! Can’t you see that?!”
Preoperational Stage
(cont’d)
• Centration: pay attention to only one aspect
/ dimension / feature of an object; Ignore
other aspects
• Irreversibility: cannot mentally reverse an
action
• No logical operation

Egocentrism & Centration

Concrete Operational
Stage
(Ages 7 – 11/12)
• Concepts (see relationships / solve problems)
• Logical thinking
e.g. seriation: arrange things in order (e.g. smallest to largest)
e.g. transitivity: if A > B > C, then A > C
e.g. class inclusion: part-to-whole and part-to-part relationship
• Decentration
• Conservation: quantity or amount remains constant even when
there is a change in appearance
• Reversibility (e.g. 7 + 4 = 11, then 11 – 4 = 7)
• Simple calculation (+ , - , X , ÷ )
• However, they still may have trouble with abstract or
hypothetical ideas.
Conservation (classic
experiments)
Understand that changing the appearance of an
object does not change the object’s nature.

(Ciccarelli & White, 2015, p.242)

Formal Operational
Stage
(Ages 11/12 onwards)
• Abstract thinking (Reasoning about imagined
situations / conditions)
• Concepts with no physical reality
• Systematic thinking
• Testing hypotheses
• Capable of thinking possibilities and impossibilities
• Meaning behind the scenes
• Development of more complex schemes
However,
•Only 35 percent of all college students
reach formal operational stage
•Some people take longer to reach
formal operational stage, and some
people never do according to research

(Huitt & Hummel, 2003; Kuhn, Langer, Kohlberg & Haan, 1977)
Piaget’s Theory

Lack
Q1
• A young boy and his older brother are playing
Monopoly. The older brother hands out the money.
He tries to cheat his brother by giving him less
money. The younger brother notices that his pile of
money is smaller than his older brother’s pile. The
older brother splits the younger brother’s pile into
two smaller piles. Now the younger brother is happy
because he now believes that he has more money
than his brother; his brother has one pile but he has
two piles. Identify the phenomenon that allows the
younger child to be cheated by his older brother.
Q1

• The younger brother is in the preoperational

stage
• Centration
Q2
•Two children are asked “What would
you do if all the air was pumped out of
this room?” Tommy gives the person
asking the question a weird look and
says “That’s a stupid question—it could
never happen!” Jenny answers “Run
out!” What would explain the
differences in the two answers?
Q2
•Tommy is in the concrete operational
stage
•cannot reason in terms of condition
which he has not experienced before
•situation is too abstract for him
•Jenny has entered the formal operational
stage
•can reason with this hypothetical
situation
Q3
•A child is on the phone talking to his
grandma. He tells her about the art
project he is working on in school.
He picks up the picture and says,
“Look at my drawing! Isn’t it
pretty?” Identify the phenomenon
being displayed by the child.
Q3

•The child is at the preoperational

stage
•being egocentric
Q4
• An infant watches her older sibling play with
a toy truck. She watches with enthusiasm
until the truck accidentally rolls under the
bed. When that happens, she quickly loses
interest and crawls away. Now that she is a
little older. She quickly crawls over to the bed
and begins to look for the truck under the
bed. What would explain the difference in
the infant’s behaviors?
Q4

•At the beginning, the infant has not

developed object permanence yet
•truck no longer exists when it is out of
sight (Sensorimotor)
•A few months later, she has developed
object permanence (Preoperational)
 Q5, Q6, Q7, Q8
5. A child who could remember where a hidden object is, but doesn’t
realize that a row of five coins still consists of 5 coins even they
are stacked up in a pile.
6. A child who has grasping and sucking reflexes but can’t remember
where are an object is that has been covered for 15 seconds.
7. A child who can think about concepts such as infinity and time,
and has no difficulty with conservation and reversible operations.
8. A child who can conserve mass and volume and remember the
location of hidden objects, but doesn’t understand the concept of
infinity.
Q5, Q6, Q7, Q8

•Q5: Preoperational
•Q6: Sensorimotor
•Q7: Formal operational
•Q8: Concrete operational
Implications of Piaget’s
Theory
• Understand how children think to provide
developmentally appropriate education /
curriculum.
• Use concrete materials to facilitate learning.
• Encourage students’ self-initiation, active
involvement in learning.
• Knowledge comes from actions (not to be
taught by teachers).
• Help students to reorganize existing
cognitive structures (previous knowledge).
Implications of Piaget’s
Theory
• Present new problems (or conflicts) in
moderately novel ways. Disequilibrium is
the pre-requisite of new knowledge.
• Welcome and analyze students’ errors to
resolve disequilibrium.
• Accept individual differences (stages) in
student learning.
• Not all who have reached formal operations
will be able to apply formal thought to your
lesson.
• Development precedes learning.
 Vygotsky (1896-1934)

• Born in the Russian Empire

• Died of TB at age of 38
• His book “Thought and Language” published in
Russian in 1934; translated into English in 1962
• Famous for his Sociocultural Theory of Development
Views of development
• Cognitive development is a social / historical /
cultural rather than an individualized process.
• A cultural context to give knowledge meaning
• Sign systems (language) – help people think,
communicate, and solve problems
• Children learn from the people around them.
• Language, culture and social interaction are
important for cognitive development
• Learning precedes development
• An ability of self-regulation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzOTvkY3jOE
Why are these views
important?
• Social Interaction:
• We learn from actively interacting with a “more
knowledgeable other.”
• “Every function in the child’s development appears twice: first, on the
social level, and later on the individual level; first between people… and
then inside the child.”
• Language (Cognitive tool) raises your abilities:
• Enables communication of knowledge
• Allows you to think about the world, solve problems
• Allows you to think to yourself (out-loud  private speech:
“self-talk that guides thinking and action”)
• Culture: provides concepts & their meaning
• e.g. Relationship vs Guan Xi
Vygotsky’s Theory
• Cognitive development:
• Language is critical
• Language provides a means for expressing ideas and
asking questions
• It also provides categories and concepts for thinking
• Private speech (talking to yourself) guides children’s
behavior and thinking (cognitive development)
• e.g. “No, it won’t fit. Try it here. Turn, Turn. Maybe this
one…..”
• Solve problems and regulate behaviors
• While growing up (after 9-year old), this muttering (self-
directed speech) will be internalized as silent inner speech
(Woolfolk, 1995)
Zone of Proximal
Development (ZPD)
• Difference between what a child can do alone and what that
child can do with the help.
• “The distance between the actual developmental level as
determined by independent problem solving and the level of
potential development as determined through problem
solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more
able peers” (Vygotsky, 1978).
• “Sometimes, the best teacher is another student who has just
figured out the problem, because this student is probably
operating in the learner’s ZPD”. (Woolfolk, 1995, p.50)
 Learning
Existing Level
goals

http://www.simplypsychology.org/Zone-of-Proximal-Development.html
The level that
student cannot
achieve even with
guidance
Task is too difficult
The level that
student can achieve ZPD
with guidance
Task is appropriate
The current
level of student

Task is too easy

The level that
student has
achieved previously
Scaffolding
• The cognitive support provided by more competent peers or
adults (capable helpers).
• The support that helps student to become an independent
learner.
• Similar to “cognitive apprenticeship”, modeling, or coaching
• Step by step learning with the assistance
• Role of teachers is to support the learner’s development and
provide structures (scaffolds) to get to the next level.
 Scaffolding
• Example: Always show students the outcome or
product before they do it. If a teacher assigns a
persuasive essay or inquiry-based science project, a
model should be presented side-by-side with a criteria
chart or rubric. You can guide students through each
step of the process, model in-hand of the finished
product.
• The type of support included:
• General encouragement
• Specific instructions
• Direct demonstration
Scaffolding Strategies
• Enhance the child’s interest in the task.
• Break the task down into manageable steps.
• Provide a direction to keep the child focused.
• Reduce factors that cause frustration.
• Model and define the expectations of the activity.
e.g., help a child to walk
Types of scaffolding
(Eggen & Kauchak, 2010)

Type Example
Modeling An art teacher demonstrates drawing
an apple before asking students to
make their own drawing
Think-aloud A physics teacher talks out loud as she
solves a physics problem on the
chalkboard
Questions A mathematics teacher “walks”
students through several problems,
asking questions at critical junctures
Adapting instructional materials A PE teacher lowers the basketball
basket while teaching shooting
techniques, then raises it again later
Prompts and cues Preschoolers learning to tie their shoes
are taught that “The bunny goes
around the hole and then jumps into
it”
Implications
• Know the students’ actual developmental level to
determine their ZPD.
• Introduce new concepts in moderately difficult ways.
The tasks given to students should not be too easy or
too difficult.
• Teach just beyond students’ present understanding
• Encourage social interaction among students. Tutoring
by more competent peers is helpful for growth within
ZPD.
Implications
• Guidance from adults (e.g., teachers and parents) is
important as well.
• The ultimate goal is self-regulation – think and solve
problems without the help of others.
• Cooperative learning – student peers operate within
each others’ ZPD, providing models for each other of
slightly more advanced thinking.
A moment of thinking

• What are the similarities and differences

between Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories?
• Which theory is more applicable to your own
learning and teaching?
• Try to apply the concepts to your daily life
experience, e.g., Classmates who are grade
repeaters
 Vygotsky Piaget
(1896 – 1934) (1896 – 1980)
More emphasis on culture Universal stages and content of
(social factors) affecting / development
shaping cognitive development

More emphasis on the role of Lack of emphasis on language

language in cognitive development
development
Social constructivism Individual Constructivism

Learning precedes Development precedes

development learning
Constructivism
• Experiences and interactions
• Learning means acting on it
• Learners actively construct knowledge by
continuously assimilating and accommodating
new information
• Learning is student-centered

• Syllabus vs Curriculum?
Constructivist learning
theory
• A theory that emphasizes that

“Learners create their own knowledge of the

topics they study rather than receiving that
knowledge as transmitted to them by some
other source” (Eggen & Kauchak, 2010, p.
226).
Constructivist learning
theory:
Four characteristics
1. Learners construct knowledge in a way that makes sense
to them
• Can lead learners to have misunderstandings of course
content
2. New learning depends on current understanding
• Students’ ZPD? What about cultural effects?
3. Social interaction facilitates learning
• Especially important at secondary school level
• Scaffolding; more likely that student will be cognitively
active
4. Real-world tasks needed for meaningful learning

Eggen & Kauchak, 2010

What can you do to help
students construct
knowledge?
• Give high-quality examples
• Connect content to the “real world”
• Promote high levels of interaction
• Have students discuss, question each other, etc.
• Be skeptical about verbal explanations
• Not that you should never use them; but double-check if
students have understood!
• Assess student learning to promote student learning
Example: Learning
Persuasive Writing
• To help her students understand the importance of
persuasive writing, an English teacher brings in
three examples of “Letters to the Editor” on the
same topic. Students discuss the letters, determine
which is the most effective, and with the teacher’s
guidance, identify the characteristics of effective
persuasive writing.
• Which elements of a constructivist approach are used?
(1. examples; 2. real world connection; 3. social
interaction; 4. fewer verbal explanations; 5. assessment)
A case study
• By applying Vygotsky’s theory, please give advices on how to
improve the situation.
• The first time I met Benny, a secondary one student, was
last September in the self-study room. He was working on a
reading comprehension and he asked for help. I explained
where he could find the answers but he was confused. The
answer was obvious but he had no idea because he nearly
did not know all the words including some simple words
such as health, risk, studies and benefits. I started to explain
the reading passage in detail and completed the exercise
with him. During this process, I realized that Benny almost
knew nothing about English Language such as the grammar
structure and English vocabularies.
• Later, through chatting with Benny and his friends, I
found that he was talented in sports especially playing
handball. He spent a considerable amount of time on
it and ignored his study because he could find the
sense of achievement in sports but not in academic
aspect. However, teachers put emphasis on his poor
academic results. He wanted to make some changes
but he could not seek any help from teachers because
they thought he was not serious. Teachers always
ignored him or looked down on him. Soon, he thought
it was useless and impossible to make changes.
The conversation
between two parents

• If you were rich, which kind of schools will you choose for your
child?
• If you find your child was talented in Maths, will you request the
school to allow him to skip grades?
• If your child was at the bottom 10% in the class this year, will you
request the school to allow him to repeat the grade?
Discussion
• Should short children be made to grow?
• Protropin: an artificial human growth hormone
that can make short children taller
• Should children be given such drugs?
 Nurture: Supporting or
Pushing?

March Tian Boedihardjo 沈詩鈞

HK-born maths prodigy named UCLA professor at 18
http://www.ejinsight.com/20170113-hk-born-maths-prodigy-named-ucla-professor-at-18/

But, is child prodigy really ready for university?

(SCMP, 24.8.07)
Nurture: Supporting or
Pushing?

Because of doing newspaper cutting at K3 and writing

at K1, kids refuse to go to kindergartens (Mingpao,
17.1.2017)
Learning & Development

“Don’t lose at the starting line!”

•Do you agree with this? Why?
Talent Development
 Believe it or not?
From Giftedness to Talent
• Natural abilities (Disposition)
• Chance
• Environment
• Intrapersonal skills
• Formal and informal learning
References
Cook, J. L. & Cook, G. (2005). Child development: Principles
and perspectives. Boston, Mass. ; Hong Kong: Pearson /
Allyn & Bacon.
Slavin, R. (2014). Educational psychology: Theory and practice
(10th ed.). Boston, Mass.; Hong Kong: Pearson. (Chapter
2)
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of
higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Ciccarelli, S. K., & White, J. N. (2015). Psychology, Global
Edition (4th ed.). England: Pearson Education Limited.
Gleitman, H. (1987). Basic psychology. New York: Norton.
Woolfolk, A. E. (1995). Educational psychology (6th ed.).
Boston: Allyn and Bacon.